


ALWAYS & ALWAYS

by tonyang (kurusui)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Moving In Together, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26684758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurusui/pseuds/tonyang
Summary: You can't return a relationship to the store.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Kim Mingyu
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	ALWAYS & ALWAYS

**Author's Note:**

  * For [broke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/broke/gifts).



> SY, 2018: “KIM MINGYU HAS ALWAYS AND ALWAYS WILL THINK THE WORLD OF JEON WONWOO.” also sy: “my dream is for someone to write meany fic based on ‘[I love you. I want us both to eat well.](https://www.rattle.com/our-beautiful-life-when-its-filled-with-shrieks-by-christopher-citro/)’” 
> 
> you wouldn’t let me pay you in bubble tea so i had to do this. thank you for your years-long patience and everything else too.
> 
> listened to twice’s MORE & MORE ep + now, now’s magnet while writing this, sorry that I do not have a playlist but it is not that important. content warning for a somewhat violent death metaphor in the final section

  * _mandarins_


  * _bananas_


  * _butter_


  * _napa cabbage_


  * _watercress_


  * _chicken_


  * _yogurt_



Wonwoo had a penchant for self-improvement. Mingyu did too, but Wonwoo’s was more moral and Mingyu’s tangible.

“I think,” Wonwoo said, “we’re important, but so are other people. We can’t just be thinking about ourselves.”

“What do you mean?” Mingyu asked. They were in the corner of the coffee shop on the edge of campus, and Wonwoo had tilted his laptop screen down, like he did whenever he wanted a physical break from staring at his own drivel.

“Like about happiness. It’s not solely our own.”

Mingyu had nodded, but he never quite understood.

Wonwoo was content to let Mingyu determine the criteria for the perfect college apartment, simply trusting his judgment because Wonwoo had better things to do than invest his time into calling realtors. That was Mingyu’s calling and it always had been. When they visited for Wonwoo’s first time, there was nothing impressive about the exterior. It was nighttime, and the streets were dim.

“The walls look like they’re peeling,” Wonwoo said, wondering if he had made a mistake.

“The rent is cheap, and you’ve never cared about looks except to trade insults with-”

“Still,” Wonwoo said, “it can be an indication of further problems.”

“You never know until you try it!” Mingyu said patiently. “I did my research. I think it’s good enough, and there’s always a risk, no matter where you stay.”

“Are you sure?” Wonwoo asked carefully.

“Never been more sure in my life,” Mingyu answered. “Except for when you reached out to me again. I was sure then that I wanted to reconnect, too.”

Wonwoo will never get used to the heart on his sleeve.

For the first time since they’d started working out, Wonwoo was grateful Seungcheol had needled him into joining his gym. Mingyu laid out blankets on the floor, mattresses still rolled up, and told Wonwoo to sleep well.

When they exited the front doors of the apartment building the next day, someone named Seungkwan was selling fruit at a stand across the street, vibrant orange standing out against green plastic advertising.

“I told you,” Mingyu said, beaming, like he’d just been biding his time. “We made friends the first time I came down here, and he promised he’d be here a few mornings during the week.”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Seungkwan said, holding out a tangerine for Wonwoo to try. He peeled it, and orange zest stained his fingernails, sugar and tang sliding down his throat.

“Your complete faith in everything you do,” Wonwoo said, quietly in awe of the Kim Mingyu standing before him, as if it were possible for him not to live up to expectations.

“I always want to do better,” Mingyu replied, but the pride on his face from this affirmation betrayed his intentions.

On the way back from campus Wonwoo bumped into their next-door neighbors in the hallway, which was the formation of a first crack he feared would lead to collapse.

“It’s nice to meet you, I’m Hansol,” the taller of the two said, and he let his younger sister introduce herself.

“I’m—” he started.

“Wonwoo?” Hansol asked, and Wonwoo nodded. “Mingyu told me about you. He offered to grab a bite together, sometime?”

“Ah,” Wonwoo said, not entirely surprised but not entirely pleased either. “Let’s, sometime.”

Hansol and his sister waved goodbye and walked idly down the stairs.

Wonwoo unlocked the apartment door and Mingyu’s greeting smile quickly turned down.

“Don’t do that,” he told Mingyu, who was filling the cat food, which was usually Wonwoo’s job. “Promise us to hang out with people without asking me. We don’t have the same schedule.”

“Hansol is nice,” Mingyu objected. “And—”

“I agree. It’s the principle of the matter.”

Mingyu bit his lip. “That’s harsh.” 

“I—” Mingyu was right. But Wonwoo was never as kind as him.

Wonwoo left again to buy beer at the corner store and talk to this kid, Seokmin, who worked at the counter and had funny stories about the residents who’d buy lottery tickets on the weekends. On the walk back his head had cooled, and he stopped at the grocery to look for a peace offering. All of the fruit looked kind of dull, and Mingyu’s eye was much more discerning in the first place.

Mingyu was napping when he returned, more likely the result of exhaustion than calculation. On the stove was a wok full of fried rice, and on the kitchen table a bowl of pomegranates. A note next to it said: “I’d have made panna cotta and jam but I couldn’t let it simmer without you. Tomorrow!” Wonwoo crosses the room and finds a pen to reply with.

Wonwoo majored in history and took an equal interest in current events. On this morning Wonwoo was leafing through a newspaper like an old man, and Mingyu placed lightly browned toast with a pat of butter on the table in front of him, just how he liked it. Wonwoo was about to graduate, and Mingyu had just taken a semester off from his journalism program because he didn’t know what he wanted to do. “I’d be a great househusband,” he joked, and Wonwoo didn’t reply. Mingyu went back to sipping his glass of water. 

After reaching the end of the news section Wonwoo frowned and folded the paper up, finally noticing the breakfast in front of him. “Thanks, Mingyu.” Mingyu nodded. “Chan from my department thinks we need to put monetary value on housework. What do you think?”

“I think that would suck,” Mingyu said flatly.

“I don’t want you to be worried,” Wonwoo said. “Knowing you, you’ll feel dependent and you’ll hate it. You love so many things it’d be impossible not to pursue any of them.” Mingyu’s mind had already latched onto _knowing you_ and all its implications. “And your mom, think of her.” 

“I know, but it’s just so hard.”

Wonwoo rested his hand on the round kitchen table, Mingyu finding it instantly, breathlessly.

“What do you want? You’ll figure it out, I know it. That’s what matters.”

They grew up like this: so close that it burned, so far apart that they were like the repelling ends of magnets. Wonwoo had no choice but to push him away.

In Wonwoo’s imagination it’d fall apart like this: they’d really get to see the truth about each other. He saw the ill-fated future in glimpses, squabbles that’d turn into fights, love that’d turn into hate, incompatibility he should have acknowledged instead of ignored. But Mingyu was bad at hiding the fact that he missed Wonwoo, and in turn Wonwoo realized that what he needed was not a push but a pull.

_Maybe I’d loved the idea of you, all this time._ You can’t return a relationship to the store. The history will always be there. _But I know that I know you, and I always will._

(Mingyu’s boundless optimism ringing in his head like a broken alarm: “You’ll never know until you try it!”)

“What I’d do for you,” Mingyu said earnestly in the low light of the living room, and Wonwoo held his breath— “you know.”

“Because,” Wonwoo started.

“Because I—”

“You love me,” Wonwoo said. “And I—” 

Wonwoo woke up one day, and he knew.

  
  


Wonwoo is holed up in his room, reviewing stacks of old books he’d borrowed from the university library about the French Revolution.

There is a knock on the door. Wonwoo voices his acknowledgement, and Mingyu peeks inside, the doorframe beheading him.

“I want to have a dinner party,” Mingyu says. “I know this might not be the best time.”

“I don’t think it is,” Wonwoo answers, looking up at him from his spot amongst papers Mingyu was definitely itching to clean up. “But I want you to have it.”

“I don’t want to distract you,” he says softly.

“I don’t think things were ever good,” Wonwoo says, closing the book he was reading, his page held temporally by the calligraphy paper he’d slipped inside. “But it was easy to pretend that they were. I want to live.”

“I’ll invite Minghao and Hansol then,” he says, brightening. “And you can invite—”

“We can worry about it later,” Wonwoo says. “What’s for lunch?”

“I know just the thing,” Mingyu exclaims, lighting all the way up, and the sun has just filled Wonwoo’s windowless study with warmth and love. “I want us both to eat well.”

**Author's Note:**

> [love language](https://twitter.com/iammisscharlene/status/1304805995697168386?s=07)


End file.
